Why Cry Babies...

Comfortable in my cocoon of quiet and peace for the last 14 months I had almost forgotten the 'crying baby' affliction that I suffer from.

I am a crying baby magnet, I kid you not. Whenever I go for a movie invariably a horde of babies descend all around me and start bawling/ whimpering/ simpering as soon as THAT-important-dialogue-spoken-in-a-low-and-sinister-voice-that-changes-the-movie is spoken.

Now there is a higher form of this disease which I get when B is accompanying me (You know B - great friend from DCE). Whenever we've gone to watch a movie together chintu, mintu, pappu, bablu and other assorted babies with extreme fondness towards crying seem to aggregate around us and start screaming their lungs out.

To test this theory we once went to watch a really really sleazy movie in a shady movie theatre (yes, it was a purely scientific experiment. Undertaken solely and solely to test this theory....no YOU shut up!). So our thought process was that no one in their right mind would get his kids or wife along to watch a cheapskate movie like this and as a result of a no-baby-around movie we'll break our jinx and will be able to watch movies in peace henceforth.

Smug in our assumptions we got to our balcony seats and congratulated ourselves as we were surrounded with shady looking uncles with not a baby in sight. However, there was an ominous block of 5-6 seats in the row immediately in front of us. But our happiness knew no bounds when the movie started and that dreaded block was still empty.

But it was too good to last. Just as we were immersing ourselves in the rivetting storyline, we heard a scream and a girl of 7 or 8 ran into the hall followed by two uncles, two aunties and respective babies! The cacophony was ear shattering and with a doleful look at each other, B and I just walked out (See! I told you we weren't interested in the sleazefest...er...movie).

Now this affliction also attacks when I am in enclosed spaces with no possibility of moving out. Movie halls, air planes, buses etc. are the usual sites of attack.

In fact when I get on my seat in an airplane, only two thoughts enter my mind -

One being that a model-esque girl would come and sit next to me and during the course of the flight would doze off against my shoulder. Then she'd wake up and apologize and I would gallantly say - "Acting like your pillow has give my shoulder its raison d'etre". She would blush, and we would live happily ever after (ok, ok stop at the model-esque girl sitting next to me :) )

And the second is that I look around panic stricken for any potentially crying baby (these babies are smart, they'd look all cherubic and angelic initially, but let the doors close and the flight reach 10,000 feet and they let you have it- both lungs, full blast) in the vicinity. This time I was surrounded by four crying babies who seemed to have a tag-team pact between them. One stopped crying, the other began - so there was a consistent and steady stream of bawling.


I'm telling you this because recently the couple who live above my house have become parents and their progeny has been making life miserable here with its screaming and bawling at all times of the night. May God give the happy couple oodles of patience.

Also, I'll be moving out this weekend so I guess there's atleast one cry baby that i've outsmarted!